


Happy Birthday

by denorios



Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-20
Updated: 2010-10-20
Packaged: 2017-10-12 19:04:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/denorios/pseuds/denorios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Happy Birthday!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Birthday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DichotomyStudios](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DichotomyStudios/gifts).



> This one's for my wonderful darling slavelabour - happy birthday, sweetpea, I love you! Thanks, and special kisses, to the extraordinary farad - one of these days I am going to run out of superlatives and will have to start repeating myself.

It starts with a question, with Chris drunk and laughing on his shoulder, with an innocent question, nothing more; and ends with more than Vin could have ever hoped for.

***

"When's your birthday?" Chris asks, and Vin has no answer.

He deposits Chris carefully on the bed, wincing at the noise as Chris lies back and sighs contentedly. He's flat on his back, arms spread wide, as dirty and as disheveled as Vin has ever seen him: hair sticking up in all directions, shirt torn and stained with blood and at least three different drinks, dust across his knees.

Vin can only smile and shake his head as he kneels to pull Chris' boots off.

"Seriously, when is it?"

Chris is watching him, blinking back sleep like a child, and Vin rises slowly, shrugging his shoulders. "Don't know," he admits and passes a gentle hand over Chris' hair, grinning at the way it sticks up stubbornly at the back. "Go to sleep. I'll have coffee in the morning."

Chris nods, lifts a hand to graze against Vin's cheek, closes his eyes.

***

It's JD's birthday, his 21st, and Buck seems to have taken it as a personal mission to fill the night with every form of vice and sin a young man should experience in life.

JD is so drunk he can barely stand, Casey is in tears, Buck is singing a duet with Josiah at the top of his lungs, and Vin is crying with laughter.

He sits at the back of the saloon, nursing the same glass of whiskey from two hours earlier, and he can't stop laughing.

When he turns his head, Chris is smiling, soft and happy, but his eyes are on Vin. Something flickers across his face, too fast for Vin to catch, and he leans back in his chair, bellows across to Buck, and the moment is gone.

***

"What's all this?"

Vin turns to Chris, away from the saloon, from his friends gathered together around a table laden with food and gifts.

"It's your birthday," Chris says, evenly, simply, as though the answer was obvious.

Vin shakes his head. "No, it ain't."

"How do you know?" Chris counters, and he places his hand in the small of Vin's back as he ushers him into the saloon.

It stays there, heavy and warm, as Inez presents the specially prepared meal, Vin's favorite, belly pork and beans; as Ezra holds out a new shirt ordered from San Francisco, red, to replace Vin's old shirt worn thin from use; as Josiah and Nathan bring out new stirrup leathers, butter soft and tooled with native designs; as JD, shy and embarrassed, hands over his old reading primer, sent by his grandmother back east; as Buck beams and claps a hand on his shoulder, promises a night with the best whore in three states, a bottle of the best whiskey money can buy, a real horse to replace the demon currently residing in Peso's stall, before grinning and pushing a new blue bandana into Vin's hands.

And Chris stands beside him, close enough to touch, and grins.

***

"I didn't get you a gift," Chris says later. The night air is warm and still, and Vin tilts his head back and counts the stars above him, counts the beats in his chest, counts the slow exhales, counts the miles and the years.

"Yeah, you did," he whispers and closes his eyes. Such a small thing, a birthday, and it never occurred to him to mind before.

"I do have one thing," Chris confesses.

There's a whisper of movement, a rustle of cloth, and Vin can feel Chris in front of him, feel the warmth and the nearness of him, the brush of his chest against Vin's, the rough rasp of his fingers against Vin's stubble.

He knows when Chris leans in, he can feel him, feel the closeness singing in his veins. He waits, and Chris doesn't disappoint. His mouth is soft against Vin's, and Vin hums at the back of his throat, feels Chris smile against his lips. It's an almost kiss, little more than a brush of skin against skin, and Chris pulls back.

"That was my gift?" Vin asks and opens his eyes. Chris backs away, still smiling but his eyes are serious, and he stands tense and poised, as though one word from Vin and he'd go, he'd run.

"Do I gotta wait a whole year for another?" Vin laughs, and the answer is Chris, the answer was always Chris, leaning against Vin, backing him against the wall; and before thought flies away and the only thing in the world is Chris' mouth, Chris' hands, Chris' hard thighs and solid chest, Vin wonders what Chris could give him next year that could possibly be any better than this.


End file.
